Well I keep our thermostat at 68 in the winter and 76 in the summer. Guess that means I tend towards the warm side of things. I do go without a jacket almost all winter long though. It's not that I don't feel the cold. I just don't feel like I need a coat until it gets well bellow 30 degrees.

Well, I'm always a big advocate of "everyone is different" I wonder if some people are warm blooded, some are cold blooded, like in the animal world. If you're feeling warm at low temps that's a pretty interesting. (I'm presuming you know your health status / you're not hyperthyroid etc.)

"I think the basic anti-aging diet is also the best diet for prevention and treatment of diabetes, scleroderma, and the various "connective tissue diseases." This would emphasize high protein, low unsaturated fats, low iron, and high antioxidant consumption, with a moderate or low starch consumption.

In practice, this means that a major part of the diet should be milk, cheese, eggs, shellfish, fruits and coconut oil, with vitamin E and salt as the safest supplements."

No, no hyper or hypo symptoms. Just is my normal. Like I said 98.6 is just the statistical average of the population. I just happen to be one standard deviation lower. Thats my take on it anyhow since this hasn't changed in well over 30 years and various lifestyles.

No, no hyper or hypo symptoms. Just is my normal. Like I said 98.6 is just the statistical average of the population. I just happen to be one standard deviation lower. Thats my take on it anyhow since this hasn't changed in well over 30 years and various lifestyles.

I believe 98.6F became the "standard" because it's considered the optimal temp for all enzymes to function. The statistical average is actually lower these days, and in many cases the lower temp is because of diminished health. But I'm betting there are also lots of people like you who function really well on a lower temp.

Having a prescription for anything is probably a bad idea.

"I think the basic anti-aging diet is also the best diet for prevention and treatment of diabetes, scleroderma, and the various "connective tissue diseases." This would emphasize high protein, low unsaturated fats, low iron, and high antioxidant consumption, with a moderate or low starch consumption.

In practice, this means that a major part of the diet should be milk, cheese, eggs, shellfish, fruits and coconut oil, with vitamin E and salt as the safest supplements."

Fully agreed, I looked into all that a few years ago and there are significant confounding factors in declaring an absolute norm, their is individual variation, rates of subclinical hypo/hyper within population, dietary variation etc.

I use Basal body temp as one of the indicators of health, in conjunction with others, like cholesterol, blood glucose, leptin, Insulin etc. and above all overt symptoms, do you feel good?

Thats just means people have gotten sicker since the 1800s. I certainly wouldnt want the new "normal" temp if that meant looking and acting like a typical "normal" person.

I think YB is on to something when she says 98.6 is when our bodies function optimally. Paleo is all about humans being basically exactly the same, why would temp vary?

Actually the theory is that the original data from 1800's was bastardized by rounding up to 37C. If you look at it 98.6F is exactly 37C. They say that Dr. Wunderlic simply rounded to 37C for the average, and everyone just assumed that the conversion was acurate to a tenth of a degree F. Actually it's said that he was also a proponent of the range 36.5-37.5.

"The first systematic measurements of human body temperature were performed by the German physician Carl Wunderlich. In 1861 he measured the temperatures of one million healthy individuals (a sample size that seems too large to be believed). The average value was reported as 37 degrees celsius. When converted this value becomes 98.6 degreed fahrenheit. So what's the problem? Wunderlich's value has only two significant figures while the converted value has three. The last digit (the "point six" at the end) should be regarded with great suspicion. Wunderlich's converted value should really be stated as "ninety eight point something" if one is being honest." http://hypertextbook.com/facts/LenaWong.shtml

Quite simply I can accept that this is a number that has a level of variance from one individual to the next, and that it should be looked at more of as a range than anything else. We know that body temp fluctuates necessarily depending on the time of day and on activity level. There is now even evidence that it changes with age. There are lots of instances of physiological ranges, and actually very few instances (maybe none) of exact numbers.

I don't think paleo is about all humans being exactly the same.... its about all humans requiring the same basic elements for health yes, but how your body decides to express that health and utilize those elements depends on so many factors that the only reasonable path is to trust in your innate intelligence to what needs to be done IMO.

Isnt it weird then that many people hit 98.6 on the mark when taken temp correctly? It seems to me that there is more to this number then just a average. The body seems to run optimally when close, at or even a bit over this temp. I will agree that a deviation of +-.5 or so is probably not a big deal and you are right that it fluctuates during the day. I dont think that because it can fluctuate by many degrees or that the national average is slowly dropping that we should just accept this as normal. I think temperature being very tightly controlled is just as important as acidity, blood sugar levels, or any other tightly regulated bodily function.

Broda Barnes says that average body temperature detects pretty much all cases of hypothyroidism that are picked up by the basal metabolism test, and detects cases of hypothyroidism that are not picked up by it. Though, it's not infallible because in warm climates it doesn't take much for your body to run at 98.6+ all the time. Pulse can be interfered with by adrenaline though.

I find it's more accurate to test after a meal once and once upon waking to see how much your temp varies. I know that I operate at pretty much 99 degrees all day long(partly because of this hell hole I live in)